On Mon, 24 Oct 1994, John Whitlock wrote:
> I also have a question: Do we really have to forget about our faith in
> order to have an "academic" study.
Not at all, but a list needs to focus and limit its topics. We don't need
to forget about the Hebrew Bible here either, but we have already seen
discussions on it moved off the list because we can't do everything here.
> But do Q discussions really
> belong here? Q is not an existing document. While studying the possible
> form and content of such a document is certainly interesting and
> challenging, it is not an actual Greek text.
I am interested in several topics in Matthew. One of them is the so-called
"historical present" in Matthew. I would be quite remiss not to consider
whether any of the current hypotheses that attempt to account for the
similarities between Matthew, Mark, and Luke that might also explain the
distribution of the particular verbs I am studying, regardless of my own
acceptance or rejection of those hypotheses, and regardless of whether I
am interested in Q research or the "synoptic problem" per se. Q is relevant
to this list because it is a hypothesis that attempts to account for a
feature of Greek NT texts, namely certain similarities between the synoptic
gospels.
Philip Graber
Emory University